With a little talent and a lot of enthusiasm, the brothers beat out 33 other would-be stars and ended up with a two-month gig during the last spring break that Fort Lauderdale would tolerate. John and Pat Stacey adopted stage names and went out in public as Bonefish Johnny and Down Pat. They quit their day jobs, learned how to sleep late and woke up in the middle of a real-life rock- and-roll dream.

It was a great feeling. They were making music for money. All they had to do was plug in a guitar and a microphone, and a party broke out around them. Their job at Penrod's was to keep college kids entertained and in the mood to buy more beer.

"Most of the kids were pretty mean and nasty," Bonefish Johnny recalls. "They were just trying to get drunk." He pauses, and a slow grin passes through his face. "It was fun, though."

But it seems the Stacey brothers did their work too well. They were too wild for spring break.

"We were totally mashing," is how Bonefish Johnny describes it.

The cops and Penrod's shock troops called it something else. The word came down: The music was too loud; it had to stop.

And so there they were, two brothers packing their gear, fired from spring break. They found a TV reporter looking for a story, and that night their Bo Diddley beat rumbled through a segment on the local news. Down Pat sums up the experience.

"I guess we were just too much for them," he says.

THREE YEARS LATER, BONEfish Johnny and Down Pat are still together, having outlasted both Penrod's and spring break itself. From a two-man act, they have grown into a full-fledged rock-and-roll band that may be just a step or two from fame. If your definition of Florida music begins and ends with Jimmy Buffett, it's time to make way for the Groove Thangs. That's "Thangs," with an "a."

"It's a phrase," Bonefish explains. "'Shake your Groove Thang.' You can't be wimpy with a name like that."

The Groove Thangs are like no other group you've ever seen. Among other things, they have a full-time go-go dancer. At first glance, they look disappointingly ordinary, like a bunch of guys who got up from the bar and wandered onstage. But their sound -- well, how do you put '60s soul, calypso, reggae, blues, swampy New Orleans shuffles, trashy surf music, R&B;, rap, funk, go-go, Carolina shag, Elvis and James Brown in the same sentence, let alone the same song? How do you describe a band that plays songs from both Karen Carpenter and Sly and the Family Stone?

"We're an enigma," says Bonefish Johnny.

Mixing their own originals with "covers" by other performers, the Thangs have created music that is fresh and unique. Bonefish Johnny has defined the sound as Sugarcane Soul -- "raw and sweet."

It's as good a definition as any. Combining the South, the islands and the inner city, it is the sound of Florida itself. In fact, the Groove Thangs might just be the ultimate Florida rock-and-roll band.

"The way they affect people is different from any other band," says Bob Maxwell, owner of the Mallet Bar in Boca Raton, where the Thangs often play. "I've seen these guys perform hundreds of times. I've talked to thousands of people who have seen them. I can't think of anybody who didn't like them, which is amazing."

In the last three years, the Groove Thangs have emerged as South Florida's favorite band, according to several polls and publications. But in the larger world of rock-and-roll, they remain almost unknown. Only one local radio station, Piper High School's WKPX-FM, plays their songs. Some critics love the Groove Thangs, some ignore them, and others can't figure them out.

For the most part, the record companies haven't known what to make of them either.

"The band can absolutely slay 500 people," says Stuart Posin, the Thangs' manager, "and the companies will still say, 'I don't know how we're going to market them."'

"We're into it for a lot more than the obvious career goals," says Bonefish Johnny. "We're serious about what we do, but we don't take ourselves seriously."

IT'S SATURDAY NIGHT AT Woody's, an imposingly chic nightclub on Miami Beach. The crowd is young and expensive, dressed to impress. The women try to look bored and distant in their strapless leather mini-dresses and tight black skirts molded over aerobic thighs. Guys show up in string ties, flat-brimmed gaucho hats and careful hair.

Record company big shots are here for the second night of a showcase of eight South Florida bands. The others play "progressive music" -- the sort of stuff you hear on college radio stations. They're all very serious and straining for effect. When the lead singer of one band coyly emerges from behind an umbrella, it looks more like a shampoo commercial than a rock act.

The droning lyrics of another band can't be deciphered, so the singer helpfully introduces each number: "This next song is about illegitimate children"; "This next song is about teenage suicide."

So earnest. There isn't a smile in the house.

The Groove Thangs are the last to perform, taking the stage at 5 minutes till 2. Instead of umbrellas, they start with some jazzy fingersnaps and break into their special mix of funk and soul.

Finally, after a night of pretentiousness, there is a little unabashed exuberance. "Lawdy Miss Dotty," the bouncy go-go girl, dances until her hair flies. Down Pat works the crowd: "Somebody dance, somebody prance, somebody make romance!"

Down Pat is the only singer all night with sweat streaming down his face. The Thangs are the only band to play a slow ballad, a powerful piece called The Beggar. It ends with Pat taking a page from James Brown's book, falling to his knees, then theatrically leaving the stage, emotionally overcome.

But there's something else, too. The Groove Thangs look their crowd in the eye. They are the only band to smile and joke with the audience.

"I know there are a lot of industry bigwigs out there tonight," says Bonefish Johnny. "Well, BIGWIG DIG!"

"I've been talking to all these bands," says Bonefish. "They all talk about making it, they all want to be stars. They're not into it just to do it."

The Groove Thangs don't have outlandish haircuts, don't have jewelry dangling from their ears, and don't wear ridiculous costumes made of leather and hardware. They don't have a calculated pose.

"The thing that makes the Thangs cool is that they don't try to be cool," says Michael Stacey, the brother of Bonefish Johnny and Down Pat. "They don't have grandiose ideas about what they're doing. You see these bands on MTV trying to make it -- they carry themselves differently from the Thangs. The Thangs are in it for fun."

"If I was in the audience," says Bonefish Johnny modestly, "I'd love the hell out of us."

THE GROOVE THANGS SPRING from the imagination and enthusiasms of John Stacey, a 32-year-old ex-advertising man, ex-bricklayer and ex-surfer. As Bonefish Johnny, he plays guitar, sings and generally leads the Thangs on their adventures in music. He is ironic, funny, easygoing, undeniably cool. Under his lower lip he wears a little tuft of beard he calls his "soul patch."

Little brother Pat, 25, is the lead singer and keyboard player. John's wife, Dotty, is the band's tireless go-go dancer. A third brother, Michael, 30, writes some of the Thangs' songs and, five years ago, pushed his brothers toward forming a band.

At his home in Fort Lauderdale, John Stacey maintains a sort of "Groove Shrine," a wall of pictures and icons. Wayne Cochran is here, the outrageous redneck soul singer who gave up music to preach the gospel in Miami. There are photographs of reggae superstar Bob Marley; James Brown, the Godfather of Soul; R&B; singer Bobby "Blue" Bland; Sly Stewart; and Otis Redding.

There are a couple of beat-up guitars, some tom-toms, an old microphone, a miniature surfboard, and a can of Rock 'n' Roll beer. In the center of it all are photographs of Elvis Presley, crocheted Elvis candle-holders and a dollar bill with Elvis' face in place of George Washington's. From a desk drawer, John pulls out the "Official Groove Thangs Fashion Guide," a collection of photographs of soul singers in sleek clothes.

When the Staceys get together, they speak a kind of hipster slang not heard since the last bebop jam session of the 1950s.

If the brothers like something, they "dig" it. People are "cool" or "square." A band playing a good song is "burning" or "wailing," it's "in the cut," it's "groove." If something -- anything -- is outstanding, it's "epic," "out there," "death," "killer" or simply "kill." Money goes by many aliases -- stacks, dough, scratch, coin, pesos, grease. And here in the middle of the post-modern age, the Groove Thangs still call a man a "cat."

Excerpts of an actual conversation:

"This is out there, man," Michael says of some unknown soul song.

John: "This guy's voice is so supremely killer!"

Michael: "This band is epic. The hair is epic!"

Pat: "Totally kill!"

The brothers listen to everything from Jackie Gleason schmaltz to the latest urban rap, but as Michael Stacey observes, "It's the weird, obscure soul records from the '60s that are the main inspiration of the Groove Thangs."

Layered over their music, the Staceys have an out-of-the-mainstream island sensibility. Their father, Carl, an Air Force major, grew up in Puerto Rico, where John, Michael, and a sister, Kathleen, were born. In 1968, after moving from one post to another, the Staceys returned to Ramey Air Force Base in Aguadilla, Puerto Rico.

"We came up in a weird place," John says. "It was like a little America, yet totally Third World with Latin culture."

"We were kind of isolated from cultural things," Michael recalls, "so we made up our own."

The brothers grew their hair long, found a secret beach where they could surf and sneaked off the base to buy booze at a place called Sammy the Happy One. Their grandfather, an eccentric mathematical genius who had lived in Puerto Rico for decades, introduced them to astronomy, mythology and Eastern mysticism. John and Michael became interested in blues music, and when their father made a trip to Chicago, they persuaded him to buy a stack of blues records.

"We had a different musical upbringing," John says. "There were no Top-40 radio stations down there. Everyone on the mainland was listening to Jimi Hendrix ..."

"... and we were into Little Walter," Michael finishes. "Because we grew up isolated from the arbiters of popular style, we didn't even know we were unhip."

John taught himself to play the guitar, Michael learned the harmonica, and in their early teens they sat in front of a pizza parlor playing the blues for spare change.

"Our music was our own personal entertainment," John says. "It never occurred to us to be professional musicians."

When the Stacey family moved to New York in 1975, John stayed in Puerto Rico. For a time, he lived in a shack on the beach, surfing, painting and drawing. He took his food from the sea and the soil -- turtle, octopus, avocado, breadfruit. When he needed money, he scrubbed oil off airplanes. He sometimes hitched rides to the mainland on cargo flights.

After three years of leading a beachcomber's life, John came to Florida in 1978 to join Michael as a student at the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale. John was given a scholarship when he estimated his income for the previous year at $65.

"John's not money-oriented at all," says Michael. "He never had the kind of career goals that 90 percent of people have."

After graduating, the brothers formed an advertising company. Michael was comfortable in business and is the co-owner of an agency called Advertising Arts, but from the start John seemed to be looking for something else.

He married Dotty Gilliam, a friend since the seventh grade in Puerto Rico, and began to write songs and plays. He adopted the persona of "Bonefish Johnny," a name derived from a common Caribbean greeting. He talked about starting a band.

"I encouraged him to do it," says Michael. "I told him he should blow off this advertising thing and form a band with Pat."

As a boy, Pat Stacey began singing in barbershop quartets with his father and later enrolled in the exclusive College-Conservatory of Music at the University of Cincinnati. He acted in summer stock and became the leader of a heavy metal band. When he was turned down for a role in the musical Grease, Pat was "devastated" and in 1984 he quit school. He placed a call to John, who said, "Why don't you come to Florida and be in a band?"

"I came down," Pat recalls, "and John just put the needle on the record. He played Wilson Pickett and Aretha Franklin, and my mouth fell open. You mean, I can do this?"

THE IDEA OF SUGARCANE soul had already been born, if not the name. John set about molding his younger brother into nothing less than a white soul singer. They worked for a solid year before appearing in public as "Bonefish Johnny and the Mighty Lions of Soul."

"John turned him into the little James Brown he is today," says Michael.

As a singer, Down Pat has impressed critics with his emotional soul delivery, his "ability to sound like anything but a white subur-

banite."

"I think Pat is going to be an international star," says manager Stuart Posin. "I've seen hundreds and hundreds of performers, and I've never seen anyone do what he does to a crowd."

Offstage, Pat Stacey is the last person you would imagine as the lead singer of a rock-and-roll band. He wears horn-rimmed glasses, baggy shorts, a Mickey Mouse watch and an over-the-ears haircut. He rides a scooter. But on stage, he is transformed. He dances, screams, growls, croons -- whatever it takes to draw emotion from a song.

"I call him Clark Kent," says Posin.

"I won't say I haven't perpetuated that image," Pat adds. "I take off my glasses, get up and just do it."

One minute Pat can be sitting at a table, chatting amiably about the concerns of the day. Then he says, "Excuse me," stands up and goes on stage: "You better look out, brothers and sisters, 'cuz there's a whole lot of soul comin' on tonight!"

"I think he's an original, man, I really do," says John.

For the last year, the Groove Thangs' lineup has included Carl "Kilmo" Pacillo on bass and Tim "Hollywood" Kuchta on drums (a nickname is mandatory with the Thangs), plus the inspired touch of Dotty's exuberant dancing.

Tim, 25, originally from Pittsburgh, has a master's degree in jazz performance from the University of Miami. Carl, 33, who grew up in Hollywood, has been a professional bassist for 14 years, including three years of playing jazz in New York. In their spare time, they get together to play Bach Inventions -- Carl on electric bass, Tim on xylophone.

"We've got the hottest wailing cats we know," John says of his band.

Now, after years of menial jobs, $65 incomes and taking his dinner from the sea, John Stacey is the head cat himself. He is rejuvenated, living his dream at last.

"He's doing what he wanted to do all these years," Dotty says. "This is the happiest, most satisfied he's ever been."

NOTHING IS EASY IN ROCK-and-roll. Most bands spend years playing in obscure clubs, driving their own vans, setting up equipment and hoping for the break that never comes.

The Groove Thangs are as busy as any band in South Florida. For the past three years they have played every Wednesday night at Durty Harry's Raw Bar in Deerfield Beach. They frequently appear at the Musicians Exchange in Fort Lauderdale and the Mallet in Boca Raton. At about $500 a show, they are hardly getting rich, though they once got a $100 tip for playing a single song.

Life with the Thangs is never dull. In its early days, the band used to play at a redneck bar, where a huge man would walk in with a stripper on each arm.

"Hold it!" he would say. "Stop the music! Play something nice for the ladies." The band would then go into a slow soul number, and the women would start to take their clothes off, right there on the dance floor.

The Thangs have run into everything from starched-shirt Yuppies willing to trade places with them to brides doing the gator on the floor in their wedding gowns. After one performance, a little old lady told John in a creaky voice, "That was the best darn James Brown I ever heard."

Earlier this year at Stetson University in DeLand, the band played Mojo Nixon's wild rockabilly number, Elvis Is Everywhere. The tongue-in-cheek song mentions the "theory of Elvislution," the "anti-Elvis," and says space aliens look like Elvis "because Elvis is a perfect being." The students walked off the dance floor because they thought the lyrics were sacrilegious.

The Thangs know they are still a long way from being stars. They may never be. But in the last couple of months, things have started to move very quickly. They have played to enthusiastic crowds in New York, Washington, D.C., and Austin, Texas.

And last month, something happened that all young bands dream of. The Thangs got a record contract. After hearing them in Miami Beach, Epic Records decided to take a chance and asked them to record a demo tape of three songs. If all goes well, it could lead to a multi-record contract, and -- who knows? -- the Groove Thangs might be the Next Big Thing.

"It's a good deal," says Allen Jacobi, the attorney who negotiated the contract. "It puts them in the big leagues."

"A lot of bands get to this position, and it doesn't mean anything," says John Stacey. "I don't want to come off as super-careerist about rock-and-roll because that's what I detest in other people. We just do what we do, and let the chips fall where they may."

If the timing is right, the Groove Thangs could be national stars within a year. Or the whole dreamy effort could fall flat, leaving them as just another band who almost made it.

But there is something about them that just feels different. The Thangs have a spirit of their own. Wherever they appear, audiences scream out requests, pack the dance floor and sing along with the lyrics of the Stacey brothers. Night after night, the sound is powerful and full of passion. The music is honest.

And at last, you understand why people love this unfashionable band with its grab-bag list of songs: The Groove Thangs have soul.